Follow Us

About Blue Sky Collaborative

about ourcompany

Blue Sky Collaborative is a privately held Boston-based company committed to building the best web-based software products available in order to help non-profit organizations live their mission, achieve their goals and make the world a better place. Blue Sky Collaborative has been in business since 2003, and was started by people who understand the non-profit world. Our clients are our partners and we begin everyday excited about the work we are doing together.

who uses ourproducts &services

We've worked with non-profits of all sizes, from start-up all volunteer grassroot efforts to global non-profits, and for a variety of causes, from political to humanitarian to disease related charities. What unites our clients is that they are looking for an easy, effective and affordable partner to help them understand and solve the technology challenges they face. No where is this more clear than with our clients that use SWEET, our online pledge event and viral fundriasing software.

What organization does not love a rainmaker? You know, that dedicated, committed, and indispensable soul that runs a marathon for you and raises $20,000 from their friends and family in the process. This is the peer to peer fundraising gold standard. When you find this person, hold on and don't let go!

But what about everyone else? Some people simply don't have the networks to raise a lot of money. And others are just too shy to ask anyone for money.

Whatever the reason, the vast majority of people are not rainmakers. Their value to the organization should not be measured solely in dollars and cents.

Here are other ways to measure an individual's value to your organization in a peer to peer campaign.

# of social media posts on sites like facebook, twitter, and instagram

# of emails sent to friends and family telling them about the event

# of people recruited to participate in the event

If you have access to this data then you will truly get a sense of how engaged each person is in the campaign. And even if they don't raise $20,000, perhaps they can raise awareness by sending 20 emails, post on social media 30 times, and recruit 3 more people to join the event.

And perhaps one of those 3 new people they introduce to your organization turns out to be a rainmaker themselves....

Any peer to peer fundraising system that you use should be able to give you these insights to help expand your campaign and take your organization to new heights.

The audience that you target is completely up to you and there is no right or wrong target audience. Just choose one.

Once you know who your fundraisers are, then develop the appropriate culture around the event. For example, if you are targeting the athletic, competitive crowd, then make your fundraising incentive-based and competitive. If you want your event to be very family oriented, give prizes to the best kid fundraiser and have fun, relaxing things for mom to do at the event.

Regardless of who you are targeting and how you choose to do it your peer to peer campaign will need to reach a specific segment with the appropriate message that has fundraising at its core.

The most common element of peer to peer event and fundraising sites is the home page thermometer displaying the fundraising goal of the event and the amount of money raised to date. This metric is so common and perhaps even cliched that it is commonly overlooked by site users.

We've found that campaigns with multiple, complimentary measures of success displayed on their site do especially well. Here are some examples of other goals and meters set by our clients:

# of Teams

# of Referrals

# of Donations instead of the Donation Total $

# Facebook Shares

# Email Shares

# Photos posted on the site

Of course, all of these goals feed into the objective of raising as much money as possible but sometimes its more fun for your campaign participants to focus on engagement and not just "the ask" all of the time. And if they do, "the ask" becomes easier and sometimes not even necessary...

The most effective peer to peer fundraiser asks the right people, makes the ask in person, on the phone or by email, and asks more than once. Fundraising is personal and is done on the ground.

If you think, posting your fundraising page on your Facebook wall will do the trick, think again. It hardly ever works. Those 500 people on your friends list are really not your friends anyway and they don't want to be bothered with solicitations while they are on Facebook.

Summer is officially here and for many organizations, that means it is finally fundraising season. So many of our clients rely on a major annual fundraising Walk or Run to raise money for their vital programs. Since we have been a part of so many successful campaigns we are often asked about the keys to a successful Walk/Run campaign.

Here are the top 5 success factors that we've seen over that past 10 years.

Emphasize Fundraising and Minimize Registration Fees. Create a fundraising culture in the event. Many organizations are content to simply charge a registration fee and recoup their costs and possibly make a little more. This is great, if you're organization is interested in making a few dollars off the weekend warriors looking for local 5k runs. However, organizations that charge little to nothing to attend an event and instead require that the attendee raise money for the organization tend to do so much better. The end result is always increased attendance and much higher revenue for the event.

Make team fundraising easy and fun! Events that allow and provide incentives for team fundraising raise the most money. Team members encourage each other, motivate each other, and hold themselves accountable.

Communication + Encourage = Fundraising. Update your membership in the weeks and months leading up to the event. Let them know how much has been raised so far and how much is left to go. Recognize the top fundraising teams and individuals. Remind everyone about why it is important to raise money and who will benefit from their efforts.

Have goals and display your progress. The goal can be dollars, or number of donors, or attendees, etc... Also remember that its just as important for your event attendees to have their own goals. Your fundraising website should require that event registrants set a goal and the system should remind them of their progress throughout the process.

Have a deadline. Open ended fundraising campaigns are much less likely to hit fundraising goals than campaigns with distinct fundraising deadlines. Like any project, most people need to know when they have to be done.

We also ran into a similar issue recently with a service called Widgetbox, where we paid an unrealisticallly low $1 a month for unlimited widgets across our platforms. Guess what? Widgetbox is going out of business in March.

We're all guilty of it. We're spoiled by the insanely low price points for valuable online services. Thank you, Google. But ultimately, the "stuff" required to host a reliable online service costs money and if you as a customer are not paying for it, then there is a great chance that it will go down or disappear altogether.

The Santa Speedo Run (http://www.ssrunners.org) began in Boston in 2000 with 5 guys just looking to spread some holiday spirit by running through Back Bay in only Santa hats and Speedos. Since then it has grown to include 500 men and women each year and has become an annual holiday tradition.

This year, The Santa Speedo Run will raise over $250,000 for the Play Ball Foundation -http://playballfoundation.org/. The majority of donations came from the friends, families, and colleagues of the runners.

As the popularity of peer to peer fundraising grows, more and more nonprofits are faced with the decision to choose the right one for their campaign or event.

Here's a simple checklist to help nonprofits narrow down their options.

Cost: Ideally you will pay less than 3% of your total campaign revenue over time to the software provide. Your worst options will cost you 7% to 10% of your total revenue.

Usability: If the site is not user-friendly, people will abandon their fundraising and giving efforts. The best options provide your users with a simple, straightforward user experience designed to get the prospective registrant or donor through their sign-up and donation process quickly and easily. The worst options have distracting interfaces and overly complicated steps for registering and donating.

Brand:The best scenario is that you provide a seamless experience to your donors and users and they won't feel llike they are on a vendor's web site. People should feel like they are donating to you and not to a vendor. Your worst options will have their logo emblazoned across the top of your site.

Flexibility:Your best options will allow you to run your campaign exactly the way you want it. This means you can charge multiple registration fees, offer time shifts, change the registration fees at a certain date, impose fundraising minimums if you choose to, and pretty much anything else you choose to do. The worst case scenario would be to reconfigure you entire event to fit a vendor's website. Thats a waste of time and money.

Design: How does it look? Ideally, the designs will be smart and user-friendly. The worst way to go would be to fill the page with scrolling and blinking doo-dads that distract users from the primary objectives; signing up and donating.

Cash Flow: Follow the money, they say. How do the fundraising dollars raised in the campaign actually get into your organization's bank account. The best vendors will connect to your own payment systems and the money will go directly into your bank account. And, equally as important, you won't have to change your accounting procedures. The worst vendors will collect your money, skim off the top of it and send it to you at their leisure.

Data Accessibility:The best options make it easy to view or download all of your data easily. The worst options offer bloated and confusing management consoles that make dealing with the site as much of chore as planning an event.

Customer Service:The best vendors offer immediate and accessible customer service. The worst vendors will put your service requests in a queue for 72 hours.

Event Management: If your peer to peer campaign is part of an event like a walk-a-thon, choose a vendor that offers tools for managing your event like a Guest List that can be used on the day of the event. Or flexibile registration fee system. The worst vendors will force you to handle registration and fundraising on 2 different sites and this will waste your time and kill your fundraising.

In the 1st week after we launched the mobile verison of http://hope.cupidsundierun.com, 60 donations came through from Iphones, Ipads, or Android devices.

Most orgs don't see 60 donations from mobile users in an entire year.

Phones are an ideal platform for Pledge or Peer to Peer Fundraising. Making it easy for your constituents to raise money for you on the phone should be a top priority at all organizations that depend on public support.

A Compelling Cause that is apparent immediately on the home page of the site and i'm sure through other materials and communciations.

Committed runners who agreed to raising a minimum fundraising amount. Runners who didn't reach their commitment were billed for the remaining amount. This is something many organizations are afraid to do to their own peril.

Aggressive management of the race with constant follow-up and feedback with runners, vendors, and sponsors.